


condolences (#0121004)

by the_cosmos_lonely (dheiress)



Series: to the archivist, your lost tapes [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Aftermath, Avatarsona Statement fic, Death, Death of a Parent, Gen, Grief, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Paranoia, Screenplay/Script Format, Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Desolation, The End, The Lonely - Freeform, The Spiral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:35:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23979844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dheiress/pseuds/the_cosmos_lonely
Summary: …It all started two weeks after my father died, when all forms of condolences just…stopped. As if everyone we know suddenly had the same thought that we no longer need comfort for my father passing. As if after a measly couple of weeks, we would finally be okay. As if grief has an expiration date.(Statement of Rebecca Razon regarding their life after their father’s death. Original statement taken 10th of April 2012. Audio by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.)
Series: to the archivist, your lost tapes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1724458
Kudos: 36





	condolences (#0121004)

**Author's Note:**

> paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin. there's nothing here but that. set nebulously in s1

**[CLICK]**

**THE ARCHIVIST**

Statement of Rebecca Razon regarding their life after their father’s death. Original statement taken 10th of April 2012. Audio by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.

**THE ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)**

Experience of death, whether a personal close brush or exposure to another’s, quite give life another perspective, no?

It’s been three weeks since my father died. He went quietly, quickly I hope, in his sleep. I don’t think he even knows he’s gone, perhaps even now he’s dreaming still, cocooned in the warmth of the bed he shared with my mother. After all what is death but endless sleep? Or so, that is what my godfather told me.

I was the one who…found him. I was supposed to check on him, ask him if he wants something to eat and take daily record of his blood pressure and sugar level. It was the first time I’ve ever seen a dead body so I didn’t know back then that what I was talking to, what I thought was my father, is no longer him, not in the way that matters. I got so far as to lay out the sphygomomanometer beside him when I noticed how cool his skin was, as if he had the air conditioning in their room cranked up. I clucked at him, admonishing him, and that was then I noticed the faint tinge of purple-gray his face have taken and, simultaneously, my brain registered that for the half a minute I’ve been in the room his chest hadn’t moved at all.

There was screaming after that, I think. I don’t know if it was sweat or tears rolling down my cheeks and my neck but my mother definitely cried that day and the days afterward. I was the one who took care of the funeral arrangements, as my mother definitely could not. To tell you the truth, it was all a blur. I somewhat remember calling the funeral home, there was some talks about logistics, about services, what urn do we like, certificates, _money._

Just like that, my mother was officially called a widow and I’m holding my father in a vase.

For the first two weeks, the messages and the gifts kept pouring in, from relatives, from coworkers, from friends. I’ve heard more stories about my father in that fortnight compared to what I know of him for the first two decades of my life. Messages about how it hurts but, _don’t worry dearie_ , time will heal. Oh, how kind is the Lord to take my Father in his sleep, to take him without pain or at least knowledge of it. How I should be strong for my mother, because I’m the only pillar left for her to lean against, that she draws her strength from mine.

Please know that I did…that I tried. I love my mother, I would even say I love her more than my father and a small, treacherous part of me is glad that it was him, not her that left because I’m quite sure I would crumble then. Perhaps, something did crumble away in me when Dad died, only it wasn’t so obvious as it would have been if it had been my mother. I cooked for us, cleaned for us, I arranged the practical matters of living after death had invaded our home as she grieved for her husband. 

Does moving on means not to be affected by something anymore? Not to feel anything as you recollect, the memories burrowing under your skin until they dissolve and all you’re left with is the knowledge that they were inside you, somewhere you can’t reach? Then, I would say I moved on, disturbingly easy. Mom once asked if I miss him. Of course, I do, but I also know admitting it will launch her into another series of sobs and wails so I shrug.

“We will all meet again,” I said, meaning to be reassuring, trying to call on her faith that had been sorely tested. But it ended up being creepy, I suppose. She shuddered. When Dad came back from his years abroad, almost half a decade ago, she started to like watching horror movies. Not because she liked them but because, I think, she likes the feeling that then she has finally someone to hold through the night when the fears set in. I mean I lived with her for the whole of my life but a daughter is different from a husband, I understand that. After Dad...after, she started being afraid after that, wanting every corner of the house lit, never letting me out of sight because she didn’t want to be alone. I would have loved to see his ghost, if only to see him one last time, to have a chance to say a proper goodbye and thank him for everything he’d done for us.

If I didn’t know better, I would have thought she had something to do with father’s death, with the way she fears his nonexistent ghost. But I did know better, she was just afraid of anything that has been touched by death…My mother is the reason why I’m here, she’s my last tether and I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to become something she won’t recognize.

I need to let go.

…It all started two weeks after my father died, when all forms of condolences just…stopped. As if everyone we know suddenly had the same thought that we no longer need comfort for my father passing. As if after a measly couple of weeks, we would finally be okay.

As if grief has an expiration date.

Messages started to, first furtively, then outright glaringly, become about work deadlines and when are _you coming back to work, we need—_

I wanted to ignore them, but something gnawed at me, so I politely replied to each of them but it was as if with every word I typed out, I become…I become less. Like more of myself is going on auto-pilot and I barely remember answering their throwaway lines of _‘sorry for disturbing you’_ with ‘ _it’s okay I needed something focus on anyway’_.

The insomnia started then.

Yesterday, I saw his jogging group completing a route round the corner from my bedroom window. They were mostly of Dad’s age, although I’ve been told that he was one of the youngest of the group. They were laughing, dimples and weathered cheeks curling in happy swirls. Dad used to be one of them.

Now, he wasn’t anything at all.

If I sleep now, would I go the same way that he did? Comforted by the unknowing? I watched my mother sleep, counting the seconds between the rise and fall of her chest. Only when she exhales can I find myself letting out my own breath.

I moved on, so that mother could try to move on. I tried to pull her out of her grief with the rope of our bond, difficult inch by difficult inch, uncaring if my hands bleed, if my feet sink further deeper into something I do not want to identify. She needs me to pull her out, and by God pull her out, I will. Whatever it takes.

I didn’t know you can be so entwined with another yet so be desperately alone. I wished my father haunted us. He didn’t, he was a kind but prideful soul.

Time became blurry, the ticking clock fading in and then out of my ears like unsteady breathing.

I heard the neighbors laughing about something my father did. It was supposed to be an anecdote I think, I don’t remember. I don’t care. The quiet simmering inside my chest that I’ve ignored for the past weeks bubbled out and I might have said something thoroughly scathing to their face. I'm not going to say sorry. How can they be so obnoxiously cheery about my dad?

My boss is texting me to do something. I did whatever it is, I think. I can’t sleep at all now. The walls seem to be breathing. His jogging group passed by the house again, still laughing, _still full of life_. I hate them. I hate their breathing. I wanted them to stop breathing, I want to see if they can still laugh then.

I don’t know when I realize it, when I finally understood what was boiling my heart out in my heavily heaving chest. But I did. It was malice. Pure, unadulterated malice for the people that had the gall to offer us their faux condolences in a week and then strut in front of us their happiness, _their breathing_ , in the next. It scared me, it scared me so much, no wonder I couldn’t feel anything for the past weeks, nothing else can have room in me with that panting, directionless malice. Funny how it made so much sense.

I went directly to your Institute for help.

You asked me what help do I need.

Then, let me tell you, Archivist, how you can help me. 

You will read this statement but you will not ask Rebecca Razon anymore questions. You will let her go, the same way I did and she will go back to that house with a mother but without a father, her chest devoid of anything, and, perhaps with time, something kinder will grow in there.

I have let go now. There’s only one thing left to do. I suggest you keep this paper away from the others, because once I finished burning the malice that is all me, it won’t be surprising to find this statement in ashes.

If it’s any comfort to you, I will take them all in their sleep, take them all without pain.

Or at least, without knowledge of it.

**[CLICK]**

**[CLICK]**

**THE ARCHIVIST**

Now, four years later, Miss Razon declined Martin an interview but Sasha managed to look up her online profile and find that she has been married recently to one Mr. Raphael Edmund Scott. In the posted pictures, she and her mother looked…I won’t say happy but there’s a quiet sort of contentment in their eyes that appears genuine.

I had Tim sort through any reports regarding the Kensington house where Mr. Razon died. Both mother and daughter had moved out a month after his death but I thought, perhaps. There was nothing of course, the new owners reported no ghostly hauntings, no untimely ailments. Tim did manage to _befriend_ one of the clerks in the biggest funeral home service in the area and found that in the years after Mr. Razon’s death, nine deaths have occurred in the general Kensington area. All senior citizens, all cardiac arrests in their death. There was nothing unnatural to that. **[SIGHS]** I can almost call it…kind, given the possible alternatives. Almost.

I would normally pile this with the discredited ones, the emotional trauma of losing a loved one already a credibility deterrent, but as I read the last words of Miss Razon's statement...the paper burned. Without any flame or smoke, it burned to ashes in front of my eyes. I've asked Martin to bag the ashes but he still hasn't returned—

**[DOOR OPENS]**

**TIM**

Hey, boss? Remember the case of Rebecca Ra—oh god, what is that smell?

**THE ARCHIVIST**

Ash and…something else, I guess.

**TIM**

Are you, uh, are you alright?

**THE ARCHIVIST**

Yes, you were saying?

**TIM**

Uhm, Jackie just called, another one from the Kensington Seniors, she named them, just died. Another heart attack while sleeping. I poked around, apparently Mr. Gregory Holmes was the last of Rebecca Razon’s father’s uh jogging buddies and—

**THE ARCHIVIST**

Huh. **[In a whisper]** That makes sense.

**MARTIN**

**[Footsteps fading in]** Sorry Jon, had to run to the cafeteria for the plastic bag—

**[CLICK]**


End file.
